


Fish Tales

by justsleepwalkin



Category: Men in Black (Movies)
Genre: Aliens, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Language, M/M, or something, post-MIB3, probably pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsleepwalkin/pseuds/justsleepwalkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Harmless” and “forget about it” didn't belong in the same sentence, as it turned out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fish Tales

**Author's Note:**

> I think this was originally spurned because I needed something more "carefree" compared to the two longer MIB fics I have (which are currently at 7k words each). Alas, somehow after graduating college I have LESS time than before. 
> 
> I think this also started as an exercise of "look around your room and write using something in it." Which would have been a betta fish.
> 
> It really barely grazes pre-slash. Oh well. I amused myself. 
> 
> And hey, at least I finally finished something.

“What the _hell_ am I supposed to do with this?” Jay asked, staring at the small plastic cup being held out to him where inside a wide-finned, blue-red fish was swimming in circles. Jay made a face and took a step away. “Hell no. I don't have time to deal with pets, man.”

“It's a fish,” the agent said, raising a brow. “Just put it in your office. Maybe Agent Kay will at least keep it fed, he's the responsible one... –”

“Responsi – _hey_ , I'm plenty responsible! I'm the _king_ of responsible. I don't need Kay feeding my fish.” He snatched the cup from the agent, sloshing the water within, and the fish puffed out its gills in irritation. “Go, shoo, do whatever it is... you do. I got this.” He adjusted his tie and spun around, missing the grin on the other agent's face and not realizing that he _totally_ walked into that one.

The fish only remained in Jay's apartment for a few days before he remembered that _he_ was barely ever in his apartment, and his absence would probably get the thing killed, and what kind of responsibility would that show anyone? So he brought it into his joint-office with Kay, setting it in the middle of their desk before starting in on some case files he had been meaning to get some research done on. He's impressed that Oh hadn't started breathing down his neck about them.

“What's that?” Kay asked before he barely set one foot through the door.

“The new Frank,” Jay replied without missing a beat. “Version 2.0. This one's quieter.” He's not entirely sure that the fish would be named “Frank”... he didn't even really care if the thing _had_ a name. Today had been the first time it even had been consecutively fed. They had a ways to go before he thought about naming it.

Kay made a face. “So Agent En finally got rid of the thing.”

Jay looked up. “What?”

His partner entered the room and took his seat, placing down paperwork of his own and a cup of steaming coffee, reminding Jay that his own cup had gone cold. Damn.

“I think I remember seeing him go around to a few other agents, trying to pawn it off on them. Seems he managed.”

Jay leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. If anyone asked, he was _not_ sulking. “An' here I thought it was a late birthday present.” Months late, sure, but hey, time was _whack_ when it came to MIB. Invasion threats had a tendency to make people forget about everything else, and they had one of those at least once a month. Aliens just never learned; they probably made invasions a pro-sport somewhere.

“Fine, whatever, I got the short straw or something. Big deal. I'll manage.” He glanced around the room and frowned. “It adds some color to this place. And it's just a stupid betta, right?” The way Kay was suddenly staring in thought at the plastic cup with the fish-in-question made Jay start to worry a little. “ _Right_ , Kay?”

“I suppose,” Kay said at last, though Jay had been around his partner long enough to know that there was still more on Kay's mind.

He didn't press, and instead went out a few hours later to buy the fish a new tank, at last getting it out of the plastic cup it had been initially living in. It swam over the purple-colored rocks without a care in the world, no sense of alien invasions or anything of the like.

Jay thought it was one damn lucky fish. Must be nice being that stupidly ignorant, but he supposed it was the same as the rest of the human population.

Two weeks since he got the fish thrust upon him, he sat side by side with Kay, backs pressed against the side of the black Ford Taurus, a rain of bullets overhead shattering the windows apart. It broke Jay's _heart_ to hear it. He wanted to whip around and blow the offenders sky-high for messing up their baby, but he was pretty sure that doing so would end with him dead, so letting the car still defend them was best.

“Look, I'm sorry we caught you out of your zone! We can still talk about it!” he yelled, though it might have been drowned out by the gunfire. “ _Oh_ , and the illegal trading of extraterrestrial goods! We can still talk about that, too.” He heaved a breath. “Just stop shootin' our car!!”

There was a pause in the shooting, and for a moment Jay thought that maybe they would be down for the whole just-talking thing, but then they were at it again and Jay realized that they were probably just reloading. At least it was bullets, not plasma or any of the other high-tech stuff Jay hated (unless he was firing it). He sighed and slumped over his legs, wishing their backup would hurry it up so that they would still have a car left (oh, and so that Jay and Kay wouldn't be full of bullets, too). Their own weaponry had been trashed hours ago, when they'd discovered the cache of illegal goods. Man, all they wanted to deal with was a coupla skimmers, pick 'em up and put 'em back in the zone they belonged in.

So much for _that_.

“ _Shit_.” Jay's head snapped up so quickly that he pulled something in his neck. Kay glanced over at him, worried – or as close to worry as he dare show – and Jay flailed his hands. “I forgot to feed Frank!” he exclaimed in panic.

Kay rolled his eyes and went back to resting his head against the driver's door. “Really, slick. You're a piece of work.”

“Hey, come on, Kay! What if he's starvin'?”

“And now's the time to worry about it?”

“'course it is! What if we die? No one's gonna take care of him! No one else even wanted him!” Neither had Jay, but he wasn't about to acknowledge that now. Point is, the fish was his _now_. Part of the Jay-Kay team! Like a mascot. Not a badass mascot, but a mascot nonetheless.

Kay sighed. “I fed him.”

Jay blinked. “What? You did? Well why didn't you _say_ so?” he asked, frustrated. “Sheesh, here I am, worryin' if I shoulda put him in my will. Sign him off to Oh.” He paused, then a grim look overcame him. “You don't think she'd just flush 'im down the toilet, do you? She scares me sometimes, Kay.”

Kay was probably more relieved than Jay when the cavalry arrived, and not for fish-fearing reasons.

 

 

“Isn't he gettin' a little big?” Jay pondered Frank the Fish, who was looking considerably larger in his tank. They hadn't changed what they'd been feeding him, or even how _much_ they'd been feeding him (unless Kay had been sneaking in extra flakes without Jay noticing, but Jay seriously doubted that; Kay didn't seem to like Frank the Fish as much as Jay).

“I'm sure he's fine,” Kay said in his default, placating manner. He rubbed at a brow with one hand and flipped through a file with the other, then tapped at a spot on the page. “Barty's got another cache somewhere. He's not giving us everything.”

“Are you sure?” Jay asked, not referring to Barty. He folded his hands on the desk surface and set his chin on them, staring at the oblivious, swimming fish. “Maybe he's sick. Do vets take fish?”

“We're not taking him to the vet. The case, slick.”

“Yeah, yeah. I'm sure Oh can send someone else. We got a new rookie, don't we? Send him.”

“ _Slick_.”

“Just look at 'im, Kay!”

Kay sighed and humored his partner, leaning over and staring at the fish from the other side of the tank. His eyes widened.

“What?” Jay asked, nervous.

“...I'm not so sure this is a betta.”

“Yeah, okay. Goldfish? I don't know fish, man.”

“I'm not so sure it's of Earth,” Kay clarified, leaning away and looking mildly afraid of the fish.

“It's just a fish, Kay.” Jay reached out to the tank and pulled it closer to him, ready to protect Frank the Fish from his partner if he had to. Don't break up the Jay-Kay-Fish team, Kay! “Harmless, just forget about it. Forget I said anything. I bet he's fine.”

 

 

“Harmless” and “forget about it” didn't belong in the same sentence, as it turned out. So Agent En found some abandoned fish on-site of a case he had, tried to get rid of it because he had too much of a guilty conscience to flush it, and finally got Jay to take it; Jay, who didn't give a rat's ass about it, but thought he had something to prove in terms of responsibility or some stupid thing that he honestly couldn't remember, and actually grew attached.

And then it turned out to be a ravenous alien.

Well.

That's just how things go, huh?

Maybe he should've named the fish Bob or Billy or anything _except_ Frank, because since when did anything named Frank _not_ give them problems? Honestly. It's just living up to its namesake.

“Frank! _Drop_ the worm! That is _not_ a chew toy!” Jay was yelling, pointing at the ground in front of the very large Frank the Fish, which was having no problem being out of water and was rather enjoying the taste of the worm Neeble. “I don't care if you're doing the world a favor by eating him, you're on a flake-only diet! Now put. Him. _Down_.”

Kay came around from a doorway in the back and shot it.

He shot Frank the Fish.

Okay, sure. Jay knew that Frank the Fish had turned into the kind of pet you didn't want to keep, but it was still _theirs_. They like... raised the thing! Together! And now he was just being reminded all over again about the time a bunch of skimmers shot up their car. _Not_ cool, Kay. Not cool.

“Slick, get out of here!” Kay shouted at his unarmed partner.

Yeah. Not happening.

“Don't shoot him!” Jay yelled, running towards the floundering fish, who did at least free Neeble after he was shot. Jay stood between the fish and his partner. Frank the Fish looked less betta and more piranha, though he retained his blue-red coloration, and wide, wispy fins. His gills flared out in his combat-ready, tough way; they made him much more threatening now than when he was in a tank.The rows of teeth helped that. “You can't shoot him, Kay. Be real.”

Kay's face twisted into frustrated annoyance. “It is not your pet, slick. It isn't _anyone's_ pet. It is _going_ to _kill_ you.”

“It's not! Look, we... just are havin' a bit of a misunderstandin' right now. It'll be fine. Just let me...” He glanced over his shoulder to where Frank the Fish was suddenly looming over him, eyes the size of Jay's head staring, unblinking and black. This is the second alien fish he's encountered. Was this going to turn into a habit? Jay drew in a sharp breath. He knew he was crazy. He understood completely where Kay was coming from, but _dammit_. “Come on, Frank,” Jay said to it, wary. “Come on, don't do this. Kay'll kill you, don't think he won't. He ain't as attached as me – well, okay, he might be. He just won't show it. But we didn't raise you to be a criminal!” They didn't raise him to be anything but a simple betta fish, of course. “Just... _stop_ , okay?”

Frank the Fish remained poised for a fight for a few trembling moments, then he slumped down at Jay's feet, fins falling alongside his body. Jay would like to think he looked sad. “Maybe we can start feedin' you shrimp or something,” he added quietly.

Kay came up to stand next to him, gun still held out, but no longer pointing at the fish. “You can't keep him, slick.”

“Why not? He hasn't done anythin' wrong, Kay. Tried to eat Neeble, okay, fine. But y'know what? Everyone wants to eat Neeble sometime in their life. It's _Neeble_.”

“Slick...”

“Could build 'im a tank.”

Kay sighed.

“I've never had a pet before,” Jay admitted. He rubbed at the back of his neck, looking a bit sheepish.

That mollified Kay quickly enough, and he relented, casting his eyes to the ceiling as though wondering how he ended up in these situations, but this was MIB, and this was his partner.

“Think of it as a new defense system for the main floor,” Kay had said to Oh.

“Like a shark tank,” Jay had added. “Aliens won't mess with sharks!” Except they probably would, and Frank the Fish wasn't a shark, anyway.

It was completely possible that Oh agreed if only to get them out of her sight, with hopes of taking the alien fish – that had been flopping circles around the base of her office – along with them. Jay didn't care, too busy grinning the whole time. The only downside was that while the construction had been underway, Jay had been stuck with holding the fish up in his apartment; he didn't even know how many people he had to neuralyze to get the thing up to it, then back down. _“You know when you have bad sushi and are up all night with bad dreams? Yeah, this is one of those bad dreams. Nothing to see here, folks...”_

“Admit it, you like him,” Jay said to his partner, prodding him in the side with an elbow and winking at the tank. Beneath swam Frank the Fish, happily enjoying his new, wide range space that encompassed the whole of MIB's main floor. Occasionally he would bump the surface, scaring agents. No one was _quite_ used to the change yet, but Agent En got the brunt of Frank's “games.” Jay figured that's what happens when you try to get rid of something so much. Eventually, it takes offense.

Kay slipped his hands into his pockets, watching Frank the Fish. “I can think of someone else that I prefer,” he answered, thoughtful. He spun on a heel. There was still cases he needed to look over. Maybe give Barty's another once-over.

Jay took a moment to process that, then whipped his head around to look at his partner. “Wait, what?” he called. “What do you mean by that?” He ran to catch up. “You mean me, right? Tell me you mean me.”

Kay made a noncommittal answer.

“Kay! Not funny! Hey, we raised a fish together, right? Keepin' aliens from being criminals! Does that mean something? _Kay_ , you're killin' me here! …”

 

 

Frank the Fish weaved through the colorful assortment of plants that littered his tank, pleased that he was _not_ stuck to a flake-only diet and instead upgraded to some delightful chunks of meat on a daily basis. And maybe he'd be able to catch some bad guys instead of just listening to stories. He _was_ brought up right, he just lost sight of himself when his small body hatched and broke from its cocoon. He'd be one _badass_ mascot and do them proud.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted the summary to be "And then it turned out to be a ravenous alien.
> 
> Well.
> 
> That's just how things go, huh?"
> 
> but I thought that might give things away. It's still my favorite part.
> 
> Come on, Kay only agreed because he wanted Jay happy >_>
> 
> And no I don't really know what the heck the fish is/was. Little fish body hatches into BIG FISH OF AWESOMENESS? Yeaaah... sure...


End file.
